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... may even enjoy it, or, according to some psychologists, benefit from it. Is it though, one of the higher human emotions? Is it noble? Mark Kermode, Radio One film critic and the maker of a BBC documentary on The Exorcist, reckons it is. And he scorns those who have a snobbish attitude to horror movies. (Cook & Bernink 84 - 90). "Horror is the most noble of genres and people who think it a lesser one because it is popular and successful are intellectual retards, " he said. "Terror is a fundamental human emotion.
If a work of art touches that, it is exactly the same as one that makes people cry or makes them laugh. Who ever said after classics like Ben Hur 'Well it only made me excited; ' or after Gone With The Wind 'Well it only made me cry?' " According to Kermode, this week's Total Film poll has only got it half-right. "The Exorcist isn't just the scariest, it's the best film ever made, period, " he says. (Branston 54). Psychologist Andy Evans, of Arts Psychology Consultants, argues that while terror may not necessarily be noble, it is indeed useful. Comparing the horror genre to ancient Greek theatre, he says that simulating a terrifying situation could be good for us. "Fear is one of the four great human emotions; the others being happiness, sadness and anger, " said Evans, "And as such it is perfectly valid. The use of it in horror films goes back to the tradition of ancient Greek tragedy. We are rehearsing scary things in a place of safety. "There is an argument, put forward by Richard Dawkins, the author of The Selfish Gene, that one of the most important developments in human behavior is our ability to simulate reality.
Where else but in the film industry can we see things in a semi-realistic way?" (Sharrett 249). We like being scared, says Branston, because we feel elated after overcoming our fears. There is an adrenaline rush. "Take the example of a child scared of the dark. If that child overcomes that fear, he or she can experience a sense of elation that comes with the power of confronting it. " However, Branston stops short of recommending The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a good children's bedtime video. (Branston 68). "Children need to know how to experience and deal with fear as well as anger and being scared it not always a bad thing. But they can develop a phobic reaction to things that scare them and that isn't good, obviously, " he says.
Dr Greg Philo, research director of Glasgow University's media unit, who has studied the effect that violent films such as Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction have on children, reckons that horror movies are the least of our worries. (Heba 106). "Most people would agree that it's not a good idea for a child to be terrified. But films like Jaws are the classic goodie versus baddie scenario - even though the baddie is a shark. In the end, good wins and that's okay. It's the value system in the film that can really affect children. " There's a world of difference between a horror movie and a violent one. When horror movie director Wes Craven was invited to the screening of Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, he walked out during the torture scene. (Heba 107). Craven recalls: "Quentin said, 'Great, I've just scared Wes Craven. ' I told him that he hadn't scared me, he'd disgusted me.
I just sensed that he didn't know what it was like to experience pain. He was encouraging the audience to think it was cool and I don't need that. " Everyone has their own ideas of what makes a good horror film. To many, it has got to be gory, dark and supernatural - Jaws doesn't cut it, because, frankly, it's too sunny in Amity. (Slaton 65). Others argue that if it doesn't feature screaming teenage girls, then it's simply not right. By this definition, the Blair Witch Project fails miserably - the babes in the wood are in fact mature twenty-something. One of my colleagues even argues that to be really scary a horror film has to change your behavior. "The Exorcist drove one of my lapsed Catholic pals back to chapel, " he said, "now that's a horror movie. " (Slaton 68).
According to Erens, the definition of a horror movie is nothing to do with gore, blood, gruesome death or even pubescent schoolgirls. "The key to a good horror movie is that it has to do something you don't expect, " he said. "It has to come right out of left-field and keep the audience in a real state of anxiety. (Erens 321 - 34). ''Scream'' was successful because of its irreverence and biting wit. Instead of just physical terror, a psychological terror began. In ''Scream, '' the classic whodunit was paired with a suspenseful horror story to create the perfect recipe for blockbuster success. It wasn't always so. The first successful horror movies were filled with undead, monstrous creatures out to destroy the population. The late 1930 s and early ' 40 s began the age of scary movies, including ''Dracula, '' ''Frankenstein, '' ''Godzilla'' and ''King Kong. '' (Erens 321 - 34).
In the ' 50 s and early ' 60 s, horror started leaning toward the unknown, when the United States was in its future craze. The era of sci-fi horror began, which birthed such classics as ''The Blob, '' an outlandish story of a man-eating plasma; and ''The Fly, '' a story of a man who was slowly transformed into a fly. During this age, Americans were obsessed with the abnormal, which explains the popularity of TV shows like ''The Twilight Zone. '' (Erens 321 - 34). Filmmakers in the 1970 s began a trend that, with a few variations, lasts to date.
Movies actually began to play on reality. Movies began toying with evil. One of the most famous is ''The Exorcist, '' one of the first in which someone becomes possessed by the devil. Then a new plot formed, that which told of normal people turning psychotic. ''The Shining, ''s tarring Jack Nicholson as the insane one, became a classic and started a trend that lasted through the early ' 80 s. The introduction of the ''Halloween'' and ''Friday the 13 th''s erie's launched thrillers to the top of the box office. The era of physical terror began, as people found thrills in blood, guts, suspense and surprises.
This theme also found a home in 1984 's ''Nightmare on Elm Street. '' However, the 1990 s saw a decline in the production of horror movies, that is, until Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson revolutionized the business with ''Scream'' in late 1996. After almost 10 years of horror movie failure, ''Scream''s turned the box office and amazed Hollywood. (Bordwell 72 - 3). Not to be outdone, Universal Studios Home Video -- which last year ruled the roost with The Mummy -- has a killer slate again this year. The studio will once again promote horror classics from its library, including Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula and the original The Mummy, as well as a fun Abbott & Costello Collection, among other promotions.
At Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment, a three-pack John Carpenter DVD set awaits retailers and consumers, while at Warner Home Video, The Goonies arrives in a DVD special edition. (Erens 333). Other studios are celebrating Halloween as if their companies depended on horror -- and many of them do, such as the legendary Full Moon, with its avalanche of cool horror titles, including recently repriced editions of Blood Dolls, Puppet Master, Trailers and Parasite. Elite Entertainment's "Drive-In Classics" series celebrates the unadorned but perfectly delectable art of the 'B'-horror film. And Anchor Bay Entertainment, one of the granddaddies of the genre, continues to rock with an assortment of new and catalog titles that marry horror film staples with delightful art-film eccentricities. (Erens 333).
Elite Entertainment knows how to scare as well as anybody. The company was one of the first to go horror in the laserdisc days, then made the transition to DVD. "We started with a reprice of Night of the Living Dead, " says company founder and president Vini Bancalari. "It's funny, because we were in the laserdisc horror business and laserdisc was literally murdered overnight. " Unlike many horror film characters, though, Elite survived and prospers with juicy titles like Popcorn, Howling III: The Marsupials and underground faves such as The Giant Gila Monster and The Wasp Woman. Elite now seeks and distributes titles it can get without hassle and, for true horror fans, sometimes the least promoted titles are the best. "There is a definite appeal to us for a title that is owned by the original director or producer, " Bancalari says. "We can work with the director to make the best DVD version we can. They like smaller companies because they won't be lost in the sauce. " (Erens 334). What is the demographic of the typical horror movie fan?
Most experts cite the expected 15 - to 30 -year-old male, though studio executives and retailers say the recent boom in theatrical horror films like Scream and Scary Movie have widened the demographic significantly. Regardless of who they are, horror film buyers tend to do most of their shopping in the weeks leading up to Halloween. "The sales period for these titles becomes acute just before Halloween, " says Hosea Belcher, senior v. p. of marketing for Artisan Home Entertainment, which scored one of the biggest horror hits in recent years with The Blair Witch Project. The horror films are not a process of emotional and physical independence for the heroines; they are brief interludes of senseless violence in otherwise relatively sunny, brightly lit, cleverly humorous lives. Transgression is not valued, and capitalism happily thrives for youth (one character in I Still Know happily brags of how much she spent on her new bikini).
The universe presented is not a nihilistic one; humanity is sure to survive, and the endings in all three Screams are satisfying closed ones, the killers completely annihilated and expunged from society. I Know What You Did Last Summer presents an open ending in which Julie is killed, but it is an empty one: She is alive and well (and presumably unaware of her death) in the sequel. Society is presented as functioning well, in no need of change or transformation. Authorities, like the sympathetic cop Dewey who stars in each Scream and Sidney's loving and attentive father, are likely to be blameless; they too are on the side of the heroine against the "other. " In these conservative storylines, it is the lone psychotic killer, the "sick freak" who is the problem. (Williams 132 - 38). "Sometimes, of course, gore can be done to great effect, as in David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly. But generally, it has to do something you don't expect, or give you the impression that it might. It's the sense of unease that's important. " He argues that The Exorcist and the Blair Witch Project have more in common than people think. (Heba 113 - 114). "In both films the audience has no idea where the film is going and that's what makes them scary.
They were both completely unexpected. When The Exorcist came out no-one had seen demonic possession on screen and so no-one knew what to expect. And in the Blair Witch Project the entire film is just to do with anticipation. It's like 'Hansel and Gretel' on acid.
It came from the margins of cinema and no-one watching it knows what's going to happen next. " (Heba 115). Any time watching a movie, when you " re holding on to your seat, unable to move in terror, relax and remember the words of American statesman Franklin D Roosevelt: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. " Words: 4, 159. Bibliography: Bordwell, D and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. 3 rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1990. Branston, G.
Cinema and Cultural Modernity, Open University Press, 2000. Clover, C. Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992. Cook, P. & Bernink, M. (eds) The Cinema Book 2 nd edition. London: BFI, 1999.
Corrigan T. A Short Guide To Writing About Film (3 rd edition) Harlow: Longman, 1998. Erens, P. "The Stepfather: Father as Monster in the Contemporary Horror Film. " The Dread of Difference: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 1996. 321 - 34.
Foucault, M. "Discipline and Punish. " A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. Ed. Antony East hope and Kate McGowan. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1992. 81 - 89.
Freddy, D. The Final Nightmare. Dir. Rachel Talalay. New Line Cinema, 1991. Heba, G. "Everyday Nightmares: The Rhetoric of Social Horror in the Nightmare on Elm Street Series. " Journal of Popular Film and Television 23. 3 (Fall 1995): 106 - 15 Hollows, J. & Jancovich, M. (eds) Approaches to Popular Film Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995.
Kristeva, J. The Powers of Horror. New York: U of Columbia P, 1982. Pine, I.
Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing. Albany: State U of New York P, 1997. Sharrett, C. "The Horror Film in Neoconservative Culture. " The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 1996. 243 - 49.
Slaton, D. Wes Craven. Dimension Home Video, 1996. Williams, T. "Trying to Survive on the Darker Side: 1980 's Family Horror. " The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film.
Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 1996. 132 - 38. Wood, R. "An Introduction to the American Horror Film. " Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film. Ed.
Barry Keith Grant. New Jersey: Scarecrow, 1984. 151 - 162.
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